Tag Archives: 2016 GOP/Republican Presidential Field

If John Kasich stays in and Ted Cruz gets a few more win and a strong seconds as the GOP race plays out?

Donald Trump probabaly will not get to the winning number of 1,237 Republican delegates ……

Hmmmm?

What does this mean will happen?

Good question….

The Grand Old party will then go into a Convention in Cleveland in July with a dilemma …..

Do they stick to the rules and have convention votes to pick the winner, knowing that first vote will bring Trump in short…And the second ballot vote free’s delegates to pick who THEY want and Trump is out with dlelegates going for Cruz or Kasich OR anyone else from Mitt Romney to Paul Ryan?

Gonna be a LOT of maneuvering on this as Trump KNOWS the party COULD ace him out….

Trump and the Media would surely cry it’s unfair for them to actually follow THEIR OWN RULES……

What would a damaged party do?

They’re polling behind Hillary Clinton actually anyways now….

And the party is coming a part also….

Decisions…Decesions….

Trump did pass a key threshold on Tuesday by winning a majority of delegates in his eighth GOP contest. Convention rules currently stipulate that only candidates who pass that threshold are eligible for the nomination.

Trump is the only candidate to reach the marker, but the threshold can be easily changed by convention delegates before the convention begins.

Rubio’s decision to drop out of the race could help Trump pick up his delegate pace, as he has one less candidate to split delegates awarded proportionately by states.

While Arizona, Deleware, Nebraska, Montana and New Jersey still have winner-take-all contests, most of the remaining states do not.

Cruz’s hope is that supporters of Rubio will move to his campaign.

Avik Roy, a former Rubio health care adviser, immediately called for “Rubio supporters—and all conservatives—to united around [Ted Cruz]” in a post on Twitter.

His surrogates are also calling for Kasich to drop out of the race.

“If John Kasich stays in the race, he may as well contribute all the money he spends in-kind to Donald Trump because he will make it so that Cruz cannot compete with him in the winner-take-all states,” former Cruz aide Rick Tyler said Tuesday night on MSNBC.

If Trump doesn’t get to 1,237, delegates at the convention will cast ballots…..

None of the establishment or rightwingnuts want anything to do with the inerloper Donald Trump….

Few GOPer’s like Ted Cruz , who has few friends in the establish party either….

Jeb Bush isn’t turning out to be a effect candidate, especially with Trump, Cruz and Rubio shinning 2,000% brighter….

All of this leaves the establishment Repubicans with a consalation prize….

Marco Rubio…..

He probably cements himself as a choice with the poll numbers that show he’s the ONLY Republican running right now the leads Hillary Clinton in a one to one match up….

The GOPer’s also can count….

If the other guys dropped out?

Rubio probabaly would be running ahead of Trump everywhere…..

The GOP establishment is beginning to coalesce around Marco Rubio’s presidential bid amid fears that a victory by Donald Trump or Ted Cruz would sink the party in November.

Weeks before the first round of primary voting, the Florida senator’s campaign has rolled out a series of high-profile congressional endorsements, including from House ­Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on Wednesday.

Rubio is now just a handful of congressional endorsements behind former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the onetime GOP front-runner and establishment pick.

The 44-year-old Cuban-American senator has long been seen by Republicans as the party’s best hope against Hillary Clinton. Many political observers believe Rubio, who has more than held his own on the debate stage, would be a solid contrast to Clinton, the top pick to win the Democratic nomination.

Polls bear that out. The RealClearPolitics average in head-to-head surveys shows Rubio with a 1.3 percent lead over Clinton, while she is tied with Texas Sen. Cruz and holds a 4.8-point lead on business mogul Trump….

Republicans STILL haven’t gotten over the fact that Bracak Hussein Obama IS the President of the United States of America for the last 6 1/2 years…

Ain’t THAT a shame?

Cause even if they get a Republican President elected next year?

A LOT of the Obama stuff is here for the duration….

For all the talk of Republican fractiousness, the party’s 2016 presidential field has united around one principle: erasing President Obama’s record.

The candidates gathering to debate on Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library merely start with the Affordable Care Act as a target. Carly Fiorina vows to erase Mr. Obama’s Clean Power Plan limiting carbon emissions. Senator Lindsey Graham pledges to “shut down the embassy” that Mr. Obama recently reopened in Cuba. Senator Marco Rubio calls for repealing the Dodd-Frank law that overhauled financial regulation. Gov. Scott Walker says he would scrap the Iran nuclear deal on his first day in office. Senator Ted Cruz blasts Mr. Obama’s order shielding some undocumented immigrants from deportation as “patently unconstitutional,” promising to roll back that and much more.

“Live by the pen, and die by the pen,” Mr. Cruz likes to say. “Every illegal executive action that he puts in place can be undone in an instant.”

For all that tough talk, rank-and-file Republicans have reason for skepticism. American presidents rarely hit reset so abruptly, no matter what they have said while seeking votes.

Mr. Obama has yet to deliver on a 2008 promise to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He condemned President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for high earners, but did not let them expire on schedule in 2010. Instead he compromised with Congress to extend the cuts for two years and then made some of them permanent.

Even on the Iraq war — his signature area of disagreement with his predecessor — Mr. Obama followed Mr. Bush’s timeline for withdrawing troops.

“Most of the policies candidates say they’ll overturn are much more entrenched than that,” said William Galston, domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton. “People are sobered up fast by the reality of what it means to actually be president, as opposed to running for president.”

Ben Carson, a black Republican doctor, has gained stregth with GOP Conservatives and has quietly slipped into a TIE in Iowa in a just out Mommonth Poll and could eclipse the Trump show , with little or none of the Trump noise…As most of us have pointed out…Trump is NOT expected to secure the GOP nomination, no matter how much speculation rides on his current road ‘show’….

It appears that he has iindeed worn out his welcome with certain parts of the party….

But to Conservative’s are not biting on the Trump ‘wave’ he’s their man….

I have pointed out here countless times….

In the end?

Most Conservatives WILL not accept Trumps political leanings and will always question his alliance to THEIR party….

Could Trump be dethroened by a doctor promising to fix HIS parties ailes?

Although he isn’t generating the headlines enjoyed by Trump, Carson has quietly built a dedicated network of supporters in Iowa. During the past month, he also aired more ads than any other presidential candidate in Iowa. Carson has the highest favorability rating among Republican candidates, with 79 percent of likely GOP caucus-goers seeing him positively.

Those glowing views of Carson, who has a compelling life story and is seeking to become the nation’s second black president, could make it hard for Trump or other rivals to attack him as the campaign heats up this fall. Christian conservatives, who represent nearly 40 percent of likely caucus participants in the poll, may be starting to coalesce around the former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins….

They watch with trepetaion the Trump ‘wave’ sweeping over their party’s candidates and wonder….

Almost NOBODY believes Donald Trump will survive the race for the GOP nomination…

But NOBODY seems to be able figure out how to make that happen …..

Republican operatives, insiders affiliated with no campaign and donors with whom Right Turn spoke last week are not pleased about the state of the GOP race. They will say something like: “Yeah, it’s early. Yeah, Rudy Giuliani never became president. But still.” They will tell you public polling is exaggerated, although internal polling shows him leading. They are angst-ridden over Donald Trump’s staying power, but more than that, the inability of the other candidates to respond effectively and present themselves as an effective alternative.

These Republicans, on one hand, despair that an egocentric bully with no discernible political principles should be leading in polls. They observe that his incoherent mix of authoritarianism, protectionism and cronyism is antithetical to the modern conservative movement, and in tone is 180 degrees from Ronald Reagan. But they also note that he is building an organization and displaying “P.T. Barnum showmanship,” as one veteran of GOP presidential campaigns put it. They shake their heads, unable to fully comprehend Trump’s appeal, but more than that they are disturbed by the rest of the field. They do not believe Trump will be the nominee, but high hopes for a deep, quality field have not been met. In particular, they are worried that Trump’s embrace of “nativism” will doom the party if mimicked by others.

Everyone would be advised to take a deep breath. Check the calendar (it’s still August). Remember who Trump supporters are. As Ramesh Ponnuru noted: “Take away the celebrity-besotted, the non-voters, and the single-issue opponents of immigration, and you’re left with a group of conservatives who deeply dislike what they see as a spineless Republican establishment. These voters never determine the nominee, because too many of them waste their passion on hopeless candidates, such as Ben Carson, Michele Bachmann . . . Donald Trump.” Already in the Des Moines Register poll, the most reliable Iowa poll available, Trump lead is down to a mere five points over Carson. Considering how Trump has dominated the airwaves, it’s not an impressive poll for him….

Colorful former Trump advisor Roger Stone thinks 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney is thinking about getting back in the presidential race. Stone tweeted his suspicion, and told CNN he had heard that Romney was considering a run from his sources.

The move could indicate Romney sees an opportunity to better confront and challenge front-runner Donald Trump. Some see current establishment standard bearer former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as flailing. Trump has mocked Bush for being “just flat” on the campaign trail and Sunday called him a “low energy” candidate.

Romney publicly considered a third run as recently as January, but decided against it, after he lost most of his valuable donor base to Bush, and the massive prospective Republican field proved too unpredictable…

Jeb Bush WAS the leader of the 2016 GOP/Republican pack until Donald Trump came along….

Bush hasn’t been all that good on the stump….

But that hasn’t stopped him and his handler’s from moving ahead and focusing on the nomination AND Hillary Clinton…

Jeb Bush is sticking with the plan.

Despite Donald Trump shooting ahead in the polls and Bush’s debate performance getting bad reviews — and amid signs of frustration on the campaign trail from the former Florida governor himself — his supporters aren’t panicking, multiple sources close to the candidate insist. The Bush camp is projecting confidence that the Summer of Trump will fade to winter, and that Jeb will prevail when it matters.

Here are five reasons Jebworld isn’t freaking out:

1. ‘TRUMP V. SOMEBODY’

Trump is the man to beat, the undisputed leader in national and early-state polls. Even Bush, before launching into a lengthy attack on Trump’s conservative bona fides, called him “the current front-runner” this week and said the billionaire businessman had “done a pretty amazing job to get to that point.”

Before Trump soared, Bush was on top. But while Trump’s climb has corresponded with Bush’s fall, Bush hasn’t crashed to earth.

Being No. 2 is not necessarily a bad thing, Jeb’s allies argue: So much focus on Trump, they say, means the rest of the Republican field isn’t training their guns on him.

“It’s going to come down to Trump v. Somebody and Jeb is the somebody,” said one consultant who has worked for Bush, summing up the thinking inside his orbit.

In this reading, Bush’s amped-up attacks on Trump look more like a calculated strategy than a sign of panic. The more the press focuses on Trump v. Bush, the calculation goes, the less attention the lesser candidates get, starving them of oxygen. A two-man race is good for Jeb.

The birther movement has come home to roost as the Republican presidential primary heats up.

In a column published last week on the conspiracy theory website WND, author Jack Cashill noted that questions had been raised about whether four of the 17 candidates in the GOP field were really “natural born citizens” and therefore eligible to run for President.

Ted Cruz has already dealt with those questions publicly — the Canadian-born senator from Texas renounced his citizenship with that country last summer in anticipation of a 2016 bid — but Cashill also listed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) among those who were suspect….

President:Debates: A Gravis (Salt to taste) poll has Ben Carson as the winner of the thursday Debate, and Rand Paul as the loser, with Donald Trump scoring second in both categories. Only 14% said they had a more positive opinion of Rand Paul after the debate while 67% said they had a more negative one, giving him by far the most negative assessment of the night. Trump was at 36%/45%, Christie and Bush were narrowly positive and everyone else had a more lopsidedly positive spread.

Trump: A YouGov poll taken just before the debate on Thursday highlights one of the reasons Trump has had such unusual staying power—61% of Self-ID Republicans view him favorably, second only to Marco Rubio’s 62%. 34% of Republicans view him unfavorably, which is more than most other Republicans but still lower than Bush, Graham, or Christie’s unfavorable rankings.

Trump-2: Jazz Shaw of Hot Air makes a good argument here—At what point do we stop asking why Trump is doing so well and start asking why the rest of the field is doing so poorly against him.

Trump-3: Buzzfeed (yuck) is reporting that Conservative website Breitbart.com might have been paid off by Trump in order to secure favorably political coverage. The evidence here is worse than paper-thin, as it’s based on anonymous reports by employees with nothing more than suspicion in a Buzzfeed article written by an author promoting his book, so a mountain of salt for this one.

Third-Party: A Republican is openly considering running as a third-party candidate for President this year. No I’m not talking about Trump, I’m talking about former Indiana Representative John Hostettler, who is rumored to be considering running on the Constitution Party ticket in 2016. Hostettler endorsed the Constitution Party’s 2008 nominee for president, so there could be truth to this rumor….

Good audtion for a possible Vice Presidential nod from the Republican 2016 Presidential nominee …

She was strong and articulate…..And MUCH better prepared than the others on the stage….

And better than mostr in the 9PM main event….

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina stood out Thursday in the first GOP primary debate, taking shots at Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton while showing off her foreign policy acumen.

Fiorina, the only woman among the 17 Republican candidates taking part in Thursday’s two debates, shined as the seven candidates who didn’t make the Republican top 10 squared off in a 5 p.m. undercard.

Minutes into what’s being called the happy hour debate, she took a shot at GOP front-runner Donald Trump for his connections to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

“I didn’t get a phone call from Bill Clinton before I jumped in the race. Did any of you get a phone call from Bill Clinton? I didn’t,” Fiorina said, referencing reports that Trump spoke with Bill Clinton ahead of his presidential launch.
“Maybe it’s because I haven’t given money to the foundation or donated to his wife’s Senate campaign,” she added.

Fiorina further highlighted Trump’s policy inconsistencies, an attack that may return in the 9 p.m. debate.

“I would also just say this. Since he has changed his mind on amnesty, on healthcare and on abortion, I would just ask, what are the principles by which he will govern?” Fiorina asked…

If Trump thought he was gonna go into the debate and waltz over the first hits from the Grand Old Parties proxies, he was surly fooling himself….

Fighting them will keep him in the spotlight…..(This my third post on him this morning)…..

But the GOP is just about done making ‘nice ‘to a guy waging asymertical warfair against it….

Donald Trump is a master at playing off the public’s distrust for the news media, portraying every negative story as a needless distraction from his quest to “Make America Great Again.” You’d think this strategy would become tiresome, but there’s a market for it, especially among Republicans, who are more distrustful of the mainstream media than Democrats.

But one exception to this distrust is Fox News, which hosted the first GOP debate in Cleveland last night. According to a March Quinnipiac poll, 80 percent of Republicans say they trust Fox News either “a great deal” or “somewhat,” as compared to 16 percent who say they trust the network “not so much” or “not at all.” Those numbers are almost identical to the high marks Democrats give MSNBC and the other news networks.

So a Republican [ Trump is NOT a Republican Nate ] complaining about unfair coverage from Fox is like a Democrat complaining she’s been thrown under the bus by MSNBC (or at least anyone at MSNBC other than Joe Scarborough). Regardless of the merits of the case, the plea is likely to fall on deaf ears…..

Jeb is in second place, and will stand to gain with a Trump fall from grace…

GOP insiders: Donald Trump is biggest loser

Donald Trump’s first presidential debate was a disaster.
That’s the assessment of Republican insiders in this week’s POLITICO Caucus, our weekly bipartisan survey of the top strategists, activists and operatives in Iowa and New Hampshire. They offered their reactions immediately after watching Thursday’s 9 p.m. prime-time debate in Cleveland.

Forty-four percent called the controversial real estate mogul the biggest loser of the evening, critiquing everything from his refusal to rule out a third party run, to perceived misogynistic comments to his acceptance of single-payer health care in other countries.

“Trump is an egomaniacal thug and everyone who never watched The Apprentice now knows that, too,” an Iowa Republican charged.

“What was his worst response: third party, chauvinism, single-payer, or bankruptcies?” railed a New Hampshire Republican, who like all participants was granted anonymity in order to speak freely. “His limited number of supporters can’t look the other way on this stuff forever.”

“Trump came across as peevish in his refusal to support the victor of the primary process,” said another New Hampshire Republican. “As a Republican I was proud of all the candidates on the platform with the exception of Trump.”

A week ago I brought up the fact that Donald Trump has been a LOT of things politically…..

Democrat a couple of times…Republican once…And an Independent now….

People here at the Dog said…..

‘It don’t matter’…..

He’s the’ Donald’

Last night was a prime example of how it DOES matter…

At least to the Republican party…..

Last night a guy stood in front of the lights in Cleveland and told people he didn’t give shit that he had resorted to bankruptcy court FOUR times to get out of repaying over a BILLION Dollar’s to people he owed,thousands and in the process she had sent thousands to unemployment….

He felt NO remorse….

Well, If I’m even a local or state GOPer, who has got his/her job and owes that to the party ?

I’d be nervous ….

Here’s guy who can’t say a sentence with including ‘I ‘ or ‘Me’ running for President in MY party….

He’s beholding to NO ONE, cause he’s rich …..

If he become’s the nominee?

He’s gonna do whatever HE wants and he could care less about the party and its people……

He’s already trying to steal the party from the bosses for HIS own ….

Reince Priebus has a problem people….

So does the Republican National Party….

They have a guy who has a political gun pointed at their heads….

And Hillary Clinton will survive the results if Trump decides to call the RNC’s bluff and NOT let him grab THEIR party….

I’ll be trying to loive Blog the second half of the debate here @ The PDog….

There are TWO debates actually….

The main event is @ 9PM….

Jump right in with your observations and comments for the 5PM session or the main event at 9PM…

It’s showtime for the Republican presidential field.

Anticipation has been building for weeks around Thursday’s 9 p.m. debate hosted by Fox News.
The mix of 10 candidates’ personalities onstage in Cleveland, Ohio, is set to be a perfect storm for some testy exchanges, revealing moments and, potentially, embarrassing gaffes over the course of two hours…..

More on 5 questions to ask yourself about tonights entertainment….Here

…..On one hand, Trump is way ahead in most national polls on the primary race and even leads (or comes close to leading) in surveys conducted in early-voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

On the other, he is Donald Trump.

(The last time I ranked the 2016 GOP field — June 12 — Trump was barely a blip on the radar and didn’t crack the top 10.)

…

I also put the Trump question to the five senior Republican strategists who aren’t working for one of the 17 GOPers running for the nomination currently. (I kid; there are at least 10 unaligned GOP operatives.) What I got back from that group surprised me: They were much more bullish on Trump’s chances than I expected — with several arguing that Trump absolutely belonged in the top tier.

I won’t spoil the surprise as to where The Donald wound up. You have to scroll down for that. Remember that the candidates are ranked by their likelihood of winding up as the Republican nominee next year. And, remember too that there are a lot of months between now and then. So, these ratings can and will change….